– I’m just going to posit that if you call our first Black president “monkey man Barack”, and the first Black first lady “Gorilla face” avoiding being thought of as racist wasn’t a high priority, the mayor of Airway Heights.

– I like Bernie Sanders. I might vote for him in the primary (although I did vote for Clinton 8 years ago, and am leaning toward voting for her again). Still I quite like the first 3 parts of this series on his history from a feminist perspective.

# of limited service (fast-food) restaurants in Seattle, 3/16/15: 1,917.

# today: 1,880.

Your search found 1880 Businesses for the NAICS code of: 722513

That’s a drop of 2% in only four months.

Maybe rather than, or in addition to, trolling CL for a Subway job listing ad, Goldy could spend some time looking at what has happened to limited-service restaurants since April 1, how the numbers of establishments at the upper end and lower end seem to be diverging, and how that divergence might increase when the $11/hr number goes to $13/hr just a few months from now.

@4 That won’t be a problem for job seekers as long as demand for radiologists continues to grow because of Obamacare and Medicare keeps paying them $500,000 a year. As conservatives tirelessly point out, all you need to break out of the $15/hr wage trap is more education — and, although they don’t mention it, more taxpayer-supported medical schools (see, e.g., WSU) and government-subsidized occupations (see, e.g., doctors).

By the way, the Atlanta Federal Reserve released a study today by its economists that neither the recession nor technology is responsible for wage stagnation.

Do you suppose it might be the decline of unions, the proliferation of right-to-work-for-less laws, offshoring of manufacturing jobs, and conservative economic policies in general?

But Dr. Bobblehead Bickle will do fine, regardless, because the government doesn’t need a prosperous taxpaying middle class to keep cutting his Medicare checks; it can keep him in business forever simply by printing money.

“Two of the justices on the court who ruled in Walker’s favor had been elected with $10 million in contributions from outside advocacy groups, which don’t disclose their donors and which were the very subjects of the Walker investigation.”

@8 Wisconsin is an example of a state that has been taken over by Republicans and utterly corrupted. What the state’s ordinary citizens were promised was more jobs. So how’s the GOP job-creating machine doing? Not so hot.

Dumbass, compare the CBS news summary of the Atlanta piece to the content of the actual Atlanta piece itself. In other words, check on one more link – the one you apparently were to lazy to peruse before posting.

The Atlanta Fed said nothing about technology – CBS did, but pulled it out of its ass. Atlanta Fed did point out that the number of people with degrees increased from 37% to 51%, and yet wages are stagnant. So tell me how more educated people in the workplace will cause wages to rise, when a one-third increase in the percent of people with degrees over the period studied didn’t cause wages to rise during the study?

One reason for wages being stagnant is older workers (the Atlanta Fed piece had 55+ workers at 12% of the workforce in 1997 and 25% of the workforce in 2014), at the top of the wage scale, holding on to their jobs for a longer period of time (in some cases due to the effects of the recession) or otherwise not seeing wage increases because they’re already maxed out.

The proportion of workers in the Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker data who are over age 54 has more than doubled from 12 percent in 1997 to 25 percent in 2014. During the same period, the share of workers without a college degree has declined from 63 percent to 49 percent (see the charts).

Try again, RR, and maybe this time exert some actual effort. Like the Fed said:

@7 I personally feel the Medicare program should look into replacing human radiologists with software programs. Faster, cheaper, and more accurate. That would save our citizens a lot more money than automating $15/hr fast food jobs.

“I’m just going to posit that if you call our first Black president ‘monkey man Barack’, and the first Black first lady ‘Gorilla face’ avoiding being thought of as racist wasn’t a high priority, the mayor of Airway Heights.”

The mayor of Airway Heights is worse than that, he wants the Obamas dead. And he’s not only a racist, but also an anti-gay bigot, sexist, and woman hater, plus he likes Joe Arpaio and Confederate flags. Plus he got fired from his day job for not reporting an accident involving the school bus he was driving (i.e., he rear-ended a car).

@13 “One reason for wages being stagnant is older workers (the Atlanta Fed piece had 55+ workers at 12% of the workforce in 1997 and 25% of the workforce in 2014), at the top of the wage scale, holding on to their jobs for a longer period of time (in some cases due to the effects of the recession) or otherwise not seeing wage increases because they’re already maxed out.”

You misunderstand the study conclusions. The researchers determined that was NOT a factor in stagnant wages:

“The research finds that ‘Holding worker and job characteristics fixed at their 1997 shares raises the median wage growth in 2014 by only about 0.2 percentage point.’ Therefore, changes in workforce composition driven by either the recession or technological change — both of which are often suggested as reasons for the lack of wage growth — do not appear to provide the explanation for stagnant worker incomes.”

So HTF do you manage to arrive at a conclusion opposite to what the study says? Aren’t doctors supposed to be smart? (Don’t answer that! you’ll only make it worse.) And you call ME a “dumbass”??!!

@4, haven’t we already dispensed with this noise? The drop in the number of low end, low margin, low profit, dirt cheap mystery meat establishments is owing entirely to changes in demographics and price of real estate. Too few Seattleites want that kind of food. And their price sensitive business model can’t support Seattle rents.

Highly paid, well educated workers prefer not to eat garbage. The are willing to pay more to avoid eating it and are even (gasp!) willing to forgo some convenience for the sake of not eating said garbage. So the businesses that specialize in serving quick, convenient, garbage are relocating, seeking cheap rents and the the sweaty obese ex-urban customers who demand this kind of food. More power to ’em.

First of all the number of businesses licensed doesn’t tell you anything about when they closed only that they did not renew the license. They could have been shuttered any time in the last 365 days.

Second, the number of licensed food trucks and coffeshops are up in greater amounts than the types of places you point at are down. These trucks/coffee houses are direct competition for the single type of business you want to point at and say, “lookeeee, the minimum wage killed them. There can be no other factors.”

I don’t understand this. It is beyond comprehension. Seattle’s polio vaccination rate is some of the worst in the world. It’s worse than Yemen! Are we really so foolish? Do these fools who don’t vaccinate their children know the threat they are to their own children? What fools. How can we, with good conscience, allow this to continue? Have we no shame?!?

@21 “And despite a recent poll showing that parents’ perceptions of vaccines are improving across the country, in Washington State, increased approval hasn’t translated into action. Many parents, especially educated ones, are choosing not to vaccinate.”

I guess vaccination is the Ph.D. crowd’s version of black helicopters and FEMA concentration camps. People are people; you stupid humans are basically all the same. After the next polio epidemic kills off your species, we rabbits will take over, and the world will be more rational.

It was pretty much on the level of a climate change denier noting that it snowed, then telling everybody that this proves global warming is a fraud.

If a relative handful of fast food restaurants close because they can’t afford to pay their employees a living wage, then so be it. Good riddance.

What I’d like to see Bob do instead of playing with restaurant closure statistics, is to explain to us why it is that he believes that Americans should have to work their butts off and yet not earn a living wage.

@22 Then let’s call on the mayor and the council to get tough! Let’s demand this. Let’s not wait until children are being maimed for life by a horrible, devastating disease. They should not suffer that way when it can be easily prevented. Please, let’s demand it. This can’t stand. It is a stain on this city’s name.

Meh. Some of ’em would probably be down for creatively presented offal on a nice bed of wilted greens in some industrial-grunge hipster hangout where as they can wash it down with the craft cocktail du jour.

@27 The GOP’s antics have collectively become so extreme that I have to believe they’re turning off lots of voters, especially young ones. I think they’re cooking their own goose. By the time they finally wake up their brand will be damaged beyond repair.

U.S. Army behavioral health specialist Joey Vicente has something to say to the batshit crazy loon and any other LGBTQ haters out there.

“Your negative opinions on Caitlyn Jenner and her deservedness of an award that you didn’t even know about until a few days ago are irrelevant.

Your definition of what or who a hero can or cannot be is irrelevant.

40% of the transgender community have attempted suicide. What if I told you that her speech last night saved even one human being from attempting to take their life. I’d call that a victory on any scale. I’d call that (gasp)… heroic?

You don’t like that a female who used to identify as male got an award at a ceremony run by ESPN? Here’s a hint: get over yourself. You are on the wrong side of history. Like many bigots of the civil rights era, you will one day have to answer for your hate, whether it is to your God, a loved one, or your few hundred Facebook friends that you think give the slightest bit of a shit about what kind of sandwich you ate or what kind of workout you got in today.

You want to voice your opinion? Please, I beg that you do. But in using terms like “freak” or “faggot” you paint a much more vivid picture of yourself than you ever could of Caitlyn Jenner, a human being just now finally finding her comfort zone.”

I understand that the words above will have no effect on a mindless batshit crazy loon driven mad with hate. Those words will never sway a mindless batshit crazy loon who lies in every comment he posts.

No, a mindless batshit loon couldn’t relate to such words written by an American hero any more than he could ever accept as human another American hero, Caitlyn Jenner, a human being deserving of equal rights, dignity and respect.

@31 Pretty much sums it up. Haters are more than haters, there are the scum of the World. I know I shouldn’t stoop to their level of ape-ology.

They truly don’t have a life of their own, and showing how desperately vulnerability due to the lack of any brains.

Like it was said, if Caitlan Jenny saved one life, that is more meaningful than anything that will ever happen or come out of their lives. Kind of like parading around with the confederate flag, only to pile up in a rear end collision with the other idiots in your parade.

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